INTEMPERANCE AS A VICE OF INDIVID

UAL MAN.

REPORTED BY THE AUTHOR, FROM MEMORY.

MR. PRESIDENT, AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:

I HAVE frequently, in my public discourses, attempted to convince those whom I have had the honor to address that Intemperance is the giant curse of the civilized world; that, as a source of mischief and misery to human society, it may claim a decided preeminence over any other evil influence which curses the world. On the present occasion, I shall ask your attention, for a brief period, while I shall consider intemperance as a vice of individual man; and among the long, black catalogue of vices to which men are addicted, I think it can be made to appear that intemperance has also claim to the preeminence. I do not wish to magnify this particular subject beyond the degree of importance which properly and justly belongs to it; but the conviction has long been settled in my own mind that, with the mass, even of those who are, on the whole, friendly to the temperance cause, the tremendous power of this vice to enslave and ruin those who yield themselves to its influence has been sadly underrated.

Intemperance has found means to adapt itself, as no other vice has ever done, to both sexes, all ages, classes, and conditions of men. There are none so high that it may not drag them down. There are none so low but it will, with great condescension, stoop to their humble condition, and contrive to sink them lower. The educated and the ignorant, the rich

and the poor, the civilized man and the savage, the delicate female and the brawny backwoodsman, the aged man and the beardless boy, the master and the slave, each and all are within the reach of this master vice of man. There are vices which exhibit themselves among the rich, who live in luxury and indolence, which are not found to any considerable extent among the hard-laboring poor. There are others, found among the poor and uneducated, which would not find toleration among the wealthy and more refined. There are vices which do not begin to show their power in early youth, but wait until the attainment of manhood for their full development, while avarice is peculiarly a vice of age or advanced life. The vice we are considering makes no distinction, but has found means to adapt itself to all ages, sexes, and conditions. If the wealthy and the fashionable are just now to be the subjects of power, it at once adapts itself to their condi tion. The old enemy slips into a cut glass decanter, or silvertopped bottles of a fashionable construction, in the form of old particular madeira, hock, or champagne, and takes his place on a fashionable sideboard, and where can be found a more genteel and fashionable character, just now, than Mr. Devil. Our genteel friends dally with the tempter. They sip and sip again and again, in the most delicate manner imaginable, and some, before the hour of parting arrives, are as tipsy as a lord." O, yes, he has a way to do up the fashionables. Nor is he particularly awkward when we find him at the other extreme of society. If it be Tom, Dick, and Harry, the ignorant and vulgar, that just now demand the old enemy's particular attentions, he will search them out in the dirty hovels which they call home, or in the still dirtier grog-shop, and, taking the form of New England rum, potato whiskey, strong beer, or hard cider, in an old stone jug, or a black junk bottle, he can make himself exceedingly familiar and cozy with his hard-handed, and perhaps ragged and shoeless, acquaintances. Oaths grow louder, obscene jests still more obscene; vile songs are bellowed forth with increasing

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energy; and pallets of straw, the gutter, and the watch-house receive the company, sunken by strong drink to a condition considerably below the brute animals.

If the infant in the cradle be just now the particular subject to be assaulted, and perhaps ruined, by having an unnatural appetite early fixed in its constitution, this all-pervading and most accommodating curse slips into its drink or sustenance, in the shape of republican gin toddy or royal caudle, and, getting access to the coats of the stomach and the delicate nervous system, contracts an intimacy, secures a future acquaintance with and influence over the little immortal, and a fire is kindled which may burn to the lowest hell. Extreme old age has no peculiarities or infirmities to which the vice of intemperance cannot adapt itself. It persuades the venerable man that the true way to "keep his spirits up" is by pouring spirits down, and down they are poured; and the result oftentimes is, that the gray head, which, " in the way of righteousness," we are told, is "a crown of glory," is dragged down in shame and sorrow to the grave.

No vice, like intemperance, has ever been able to seize on all occasions, sacred, social, and patriotic, joyful and afflictive, and turn them to its own account, or, in other words, make them the instruments of strengthening or perpetuating itself. The odious vices of gambling and profanity have been able to make a little capital stock, to gain strength, impetus, or new victims, from regimental reviews, auction sales, public exhibitions or executions, raisings of buildings, bridges, and the like. They could not, however, make much out of funeral occasions, religious anniversaries, convocations, &c. But intemperance - that most subtle and efficient emissary of Satan-has, in times past, found means to employ all occasions where men have met together, for securing new victims, or strengthening its chains upon those already within its grasp. The same hook which, baited with new rum, caught the ragged loafer at a regimental review, caught, sometimes, the Rev. D. D., or the Right Rev. Bishop, when, baited with ministerial toddy, it was dropped

into the religious convocation. On all occasions, from the first moment of human existence to the last, it thrust itself before or coiled itself around the generation which has preceded us, to deceive, seduce, and destroy. Alcohol was the first thing that saluted the senses of the new-born infant, and it bathed the temples of expiring age.

By its ability to crush all the powers, faculties, affections, interests, and hopes of individual man, intemperance asserts its supremacy over all or most of the other vices which degrade and curse mankind. Profanity, if indulged in, will injure a man's reputation in any well-regulated, Christian community. It will sadly deprave his moral nature. But does it disease his body? Certainly not. Does it waste his estate? No. Does it necessarily alienate his affections from his family, or destroy his intellect? No. It may be long indulged in, and yet not necessarily or materially affect either. Yet it is an odious vice, offensive to God and to all good men. But look at another hateful and terrible form of vice gambling. This lays hold of a man with a stronger grasp than profanity. It injures the reputation, depraves the heart; and to these injurious results, common both to it and to profanity, gambling adds the waste of property, as a general rule; and, if the passion for it gain considerable strength, it will alienate a man's affections from wife, children, and home. Nevertheless, there are powers and interests of men which gambling does not immediately or ordinarily reach. It does not necessarily disease the body or destroy the intellect. Many professional gamblers, in our large cities, have healthy physical frames, and intellects unimpaired; so that, although it be a terrible vice, it does not at once attack all our powers and interests. Intemperance, however, leaves no power, faculty, interest, or proper affection uninjured. That it diseases the body, no one will dispute. That it enfeebles the intellect, even some of the most noble that God has ever given to man, we have melancholy evidence. That it wastes the property and hardens the heart, every one knows who has paid atten

tion to the subject; and if any individual before me doubts whether it can crush or alienate the social affections, let him go and ask the drunkard's wife and children. This terrible vice, as the sailor would say, sweeps the deck, and does not leave a spar standing. Hence it is an utter impossibility to restore completely to a man, by the most thorough reformation, all that he has lost by the vice, if it have been long continued. John Hawkins, whose name is known through every state of this Union, and on the other side of the Atlantic, although he has never swerved from the temperance faith since he embraced it, and although he has a place in the affections of thousands, for his consistent course and his zeal. ous efforts for the advancement of the cause of temperance and the restoration of the fallen and the wretched, will never be able to repair all the mischief which has been done him by his former intemperance. His physical frame, firmly knit and excellent as it was originally, was terribly wrenched by the old enemy. The same is true of thousands of our reformed brethren. George Haydock, the ex-wood-sawyer, of Hudson, as he calls himself, although he retains more intellectual sharpness, in spite of his former intemperance, than is possessed by the average of men who never got drunk in the course of their lives, will, nevertheless, find it quite impossible to rub out all the scars he received during his period of slavery to this terrible vice. He will never find a perfect substitute for the leg which, to use his own words, lost in the service of old King Alcohol."

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Another point, to which I would direct attention, is that, in the brotherhood of vices, intemperance is generally the pioneer, or, if not emphatically the pioneer, it sets off on its errand of mischief with but a small company. Very few young men become notorious for their habits of gaming or licentiousness who abstain from the use of alcoholic drinks. Of those who had been religiously educated or placed under proper restraints in their youth, I never met with a man who had become a proficient in either of those vices, where the